The weekly challenge

• A new challenge opens every Monday at midnight Eastern Time and runs for a week.
• It is a ladder of 20 levels, each harder than the one before.
• Your highest Arena's level is how many levels you can fight: an Arena of level 4 opens levels 1 to 4.
• Levels go in order. You fight the next one once you have won the one before it.
• You can retry a level as often as you like. It pays the first time you win it each week, and a level you have won pays nothing when you play it again.
• Once you have won a level, you can replay the highest level you have won. A replay win pays no resources, gold or platinum. It moves you up the weekly board and adds 1 to your PvE score.
• Everything starts again when the next challenge opens.

• You fight with one of your saved decks, in any Arena of yours. You play every move yourself.
• You attack. The opponent defends, behind a Town Wall on the levels that have one.
• A deck in another city travels to the Arena first, shown beside its name in the picker. It walks across its own island, and across the sea it needs its city's Port and a free ship.
• The match opens when the deck arrives, and it sets off home when the match ends.
• While it is away it defends nothing and cannot raid. You can call it home until its match starts.
• No mana is spent and your cards do not wear.
• Fight a level as often as you like. Only the first win each week pays.
• Win with a deck that is in the Arena's city and the result offers Next level, the same deck against the level above, if your Arena opens it.
• The week has one deck limit for every level, shown on the challenge. Your deck has to keep to it.
• Choose a deck that breaks the limit and the challenge shows the cards that break it, and you cannot fight until you take them out.

A level can have up to 2 twists that change the rules of its match:

• Deep pockets: both sides get 1 more mana every turn.
• Full hands: both sides start with 7 cards, not 5.
• No second chances: nobody may redraw their opening hand.
• Crowded hall: each board holds 5 things, not 8.
• Running dry: an empty deck hurts its deck master 3 the first time, not 1.
• Head start: the opponent gets 1 more mana every turn than you.

The week's limit is one of these:

• None.
• Standard and Rare cards only.
• Every minion shares one minion type.
• No Locations.
• Every card costs 3 mana or less.
• None of a list of up to 10 named cards.

• Level 1 pays 300 wood, 80 each of stone, glass, coffee and mana, 100 gold and 2 platinum.
• Each level pays more than the one before. Level 20 pays 1,725 wood, 460 each of stone, glass, coffee and mana, 575 gold and 4 platinum.
• Platinum is 2 a level up to level 10 and 4 a level from 11: 60 for the whole ladder.
• Resources go to the city whose Arena you won in. Gold and platinum go to your empire.
• Each level won adds 2 points to the PvE leaderboard, and each win of a level you had already won adds 1.

The board ranks everyone by the highest level they have won this week. It shows the top 10.

• On the same level, whoever has won it again more often ranks higher.
• Replays never lift you past a player on a higher level.
• If that is tied too, whoever got there first ranks higher.
• A replay counts only if its match finishes before the week closes.

When the week closes, the top 5 each win a random card of a rarity, plus gold and platinum:

• 1st: a Legendary card, 1,000 gold and 40 platinum.
• 2nd: a Epic card, 750 gold and 25 platinum.
• 3rd: a Rare card, 500 gold and 15 platinum.
• 4th: a Standard card, 300 gold and 10 platinum.
• 5th: a Standard card, 200 gold and 5 platinum.